Saturday, December 03, 2011

Countdown to Crossover Part 2: The Design process.

So last time I waxed lyrical about how the idea for crossover came about this time I am going to take a look at where we went with the idea.

As I was recently reminded a picture is worth a thousand words so I thought it would be easiest for Rusti to show me his ideas in a picture so with that in mind I knocked up a couple of blank body templates for him to sketch over some uniform ideas:

Feel free to use these templates for your own hero sketches, it's fun! I know the woman is all shoulders and no hips but give me a break, it's the first female figure I've drawn in about a decade and for my drawings close enough is close enough!

So anyway, I sent Rusti a copy of the templates for him to rough out his ideas on and pretty soon I had the first one back. A classic, bodysuited, old school hero type. Or at least that's what I assumed it was...

By the looks of things Rusti didn't draw...

...but that was okay because at least I knew what he was after (assuming the eyes were artistic license and not an accurate reflection of his desires). So I adjusted and had a mess around and came back with a couple of versions of a classic bodysuited hero:

The first one had a slightly more modern look with some raised and padded areas to add a bit of something extra whilst the second was a lot truer to the original idea maintaining the stark simplicity and allowing plenty of scope for painters to add their own personality to the figure. Rusti was quite happy for the figure to share the same pose with the sketch template so I even knew how to pose him up. After a few more back and forth's Rusti and I had come up four characters and a 'goon' and I was about ready to get sculpting...

And below you see the fruits of my labour. Here is the first of out new heroes, the torch bearer for Crossover. Being such a simple figure I had to make sure the body shape worked as I wouldn't be able to hide anything under 'stuff'. I'm really pleased how he turned out.

As I said Rusti and I had come up with a number of characters; heroes, villains and goons, and they were all coming along great but then we decided to try something a little different. something risky but we thought it'd be worth the effort.

Tune in to our next thrilling instalment as we reveal the big plot twist and start paving the way to the gripping conclusion of a story that could only be called: Countdown to Crossover!